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By the time of his w:String Quartet No. 4 (Bartók)Fourth String Quartet, inversional symmetry had become as fundamental a premise of Bartok's harmonic language as it is of the twelve-tone music of Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern.

— George Perle

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More quotes by George Perle

This intersecting of inherently non-symmetrical diatonic elements with inherently non-diatonic symmetrical elements seems to me the defining principle of the musical language of Le Sacre and the source of the unparalleled tension and conflicted energy of the work.

Every bit of theorizing I’ve ever done, including my interest in Berg, has come as a consequence of discoveries I made as a composer and interests that I developed as a composer. I never thought of my theory as being a kind of irrelevant activity to my composing.

His partitioning of the octave in the first ten bars places Varèse with Scriabin and the Schoenberg circle among the revolutionary composers whose work initiates the beginning of a new mainstream tradition in the music of our century.

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: George Perle (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.